Andrew Romanoff tells retirement home group his race “is up for grabs”

Andrew Romanoff, the Democrat seeking to represent the 6th Congressional District, speaks on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, to residents at the Inn at Greenwood Village senior living facility. (Jon Murray, The Denver Post)

Andrew Romanoff knew his audience wasn’t up for a hard sell. So during a visit Tuesday to the Inn at Greenwood Village, a retirement community near the Denver Tech Center, he took a more conversational approach. He asked where the 18 or so attendees of the meet-and-greet were from. He took questions about globalization, the economy, immigration and other top-of-the-news issues. He mixed it up before the talk with William S. Jackson, a resident who served in the Colorado House from 1953 to 1955. And he managed a joke near the end, asking — when someone requested information about voter registration deadlines — if anyone there was younger than 18.

But he reined in the seriousness at times.

“Unlike most congressional districts in America, this one’s up for grabs,” Romanoff told the residents, asking politely for their vote. Romanoff, the Democratic former Colorado House speaker, is challenging U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, the three-term Republican who represents an increasingly diverse 6th Congressional District in Denver’s north, east and south suburbs. Romanoff, who’s campaigning full time, has stopped by several retirement communities, community meetings and other events to press his case.

Romanoff drew upon his statehouse experience, as he’s done in the first candidate TV ad of the race. In that spot, which debuted last week, he cites his record as speaker, when he worked with colleagues to pass balanced budgets. He supports a similar balanced-budget requirement for Congress.

The 6th District “is the kind of district that deserves the kind of representative that can work across the aisle, who can get things done,” Romanoff said, citing his work with Republican Gov. Bill Owens. “That what I did as speaker of the House. I think that’s what’s not happening right now.” Attendees were receptive to his criticisms of a do-nothing, fight-about-everything Congress.

Lately, Romanoff’s ad on balanced budgets has drawn a swarm of criticism from Republicans who question his support for big-spending issues in the past. Coffman’s camp this week said Romanoff’s call for a federal balanced budget amendment is “a policy squarely at odds with Romanoff’s enthusiastic support for Obamacare and the President’s 2009 failed stimulus program, two of the key drivers of the nation’s current debt crisis.” Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee said, “Either Romanoff doesn’t comprehend basic economic principles or he’s misleading voters in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District.”

I asked Romanoff later about such criticism, and he gave an answer similar to what he told The Denver Post in 2010, when he was running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate against Michael Bennet.
“Congressman Coffman says he wants to balance the budget, and I support that goal,” Romanoff said Tuesday. “We just take very different views on how to get from here to there. … If you’re fighting a war, a natural disaster, an economic recession — sometimes it makes sense to spend money to get yourself out of that hole.” With that said, he added that the stimulus packages passed by Congress in 2008 and 2009 had been “a mixed bag, like pretty much every intervention.” Had he been in Congress then, he said, he might have tried to do some things differently. Still, he saw them as worthwhile measures to take in the short term.

“But over the long run, you’ve got to bring the debt under control,” Romanoff said. “You’ve got to stop running such a massive deficit.”

Romanoff is desperate for a seat in congress and will carpetbag the whole state until he finally wins a seat. I see little chance he wins CO6 in a midterm election given the low turnout likely by the gimmicrats and low-information voters. Romanoff should primary DeGette for most crazy CO rep.

IndyThought

Wow, Romanoff obviously does not read the same polls as all the liberals who post in these threads.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.